Evaluating Web training tools

[Alan Montague]

The company I joined recently is (happily) very serious about its training. They do a whole lot of technical training to customers and it’s almost all delivered in Instructor led web ‘classroom’s
We are also building a very significant new hire training program and as much of that will be conducted with the learners rotating between head office and home offices the web classroom will also be part of this delivery.
We currently use GoToMeeting and I find it has several shortcomings for the functionality we particularly want so I’m looking around at other.
Now the question.
As I don’t wish to re-invent the wheel I’m wondering has anyone else done a comparison shopping exercise on web learning tools and if so do you have a list of features / functions that you consider “must-haves” and “nice-to-haves”
Now if you have done a full evaluation that you care to share – even better but asking for that would be cheeky!
Thanks
Alan

[Tony Karrer]

Alan - when you say - "web learning tools" that's quite a broad list. Do you mean Virtual Classroom/Meeting tools?

You might look at:

http://elearningtech.blogspot.com/2008/12/web-conferencing-services...
http://elearningtech.blogspot.com/2008/12/collaboration-tools.html
http://c4lpt.co.uk/Directory/Tools/conferencing.html
http://www.elearninglearning.com/tools/virtual-classroom/

[Holly St. John Peck]

Hi Alan, we tried several different webinar platforms for virtual training...Go To Meeting, Ellumninate, WebEx. Wasn't impressed with Go To Meeting. I liked one of the features especially that Elluminate has...the ability to have a 'lesson plan' that is saved and can be used each time in the future by other trainers to lead a session. Since that product was designed for online learning for universities, they understood the need for lesson plans. Utlimately, though, our final choice for our company was WebEx Training Center, which holds up to 30 people per session, or you can use their Event Center which holds hundreds of people. WebEx (owned by Cisco), seemed dependable in their technology, many in corporate America are familiar with it, they have flexible 'grow into' features/plans, bill monthly instead of annually, and were less expensive than Elluminate.
The features we were looking for to hold interactive webinars, were:

-ability to have separate teleconference audio bridge (can use freeconference.com and add it to WebEx, less expensive than using WebEx bridge)
-my company logo/branding on main WebEx page that people see upon signing in
-polling participants and ability to share the results
-chatting (including private chat which the presenter can utimately see/save to review (good learning here!)
-private registration option to session, with participants having to 'sign in' to your webinar...great if your webinar is confidential or 'for payment'.
-whiteboard tool that everyone can use
-breakout rooms with instructor ability to float around and check in
-ability to send a digital survey at end of session (I use Zoomerang) through the web tour feature
-emoticons (smiley face, coffee break, etc...) so you know what's happening out there
-agree/disagree (red X, green checkmark) tool to quickly poll on a point
-reminder emails automatically sent to participants about the upcoming session
-recording capability

Hope this helps! Holly Peck, Peck Training Group LLC (www.pecktraining.com)

[Peter Kelley]

Hi Alan _ Based on your post, I assume your question about "web learning tools" pertains to virtual classroom technologies, but I was curious about your company's stance on blending learning solutions outside of ILT and VCT approaches.

Has there been any consideration focused on integrating eLearning and social learning into the training matrix, particularly if you're managing a distributed workforce?

The level of sophistication, "ease-of-use," and lowered price barriers available with today's learning development tools and delivery systems allows companies such as yours to add this powerful option to your training offerings relatively painlessly.


Peter Kelley, i3Logic (www.i3Logic.net)

[Andreas Link]

Hi Allan,

a plain comparison:

Especially you might look at 'External links' ...

Andreas